The Emergence of a Novel Spirituality: How Steven Barrie-Anthony’s Work Influenced My Clinical Work and My Personal Sensibility

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay responds to Steven Barrie-Anthony’s article in this issue (“The Sacralization of the Intimate Edge: Heeding Spirituality’s Call for Mutual Experience within Clinical Work”). Dr. Barrie-Anthony’s paper moved me to listen for and attend to the spiritual experience of my patients and also to explore these realms in my own life. Before reading Dr. Barrie-Anthony’s contribution I was not very sensitive to hearing patients’ spiritual inclinations – probably because we rarely discover in the clinical interchange what we are not expecting, prepared for, or hoping to find. This shift in attitude is a new opening for me, but it also reflects my love of romantic poetry in earlier life. This essay draws on my work with a patient and on my own life experience to consider clinical and personal avenues that listening to the spiritual are opening up. My attitude toward this whole issue has continued to change and it is remarkable to me that by remaining open to what I had apparently, and not only consciously but also unconsciously, closed off, I see a change in my clinical practice.